Haven’t blogged much today, because everywhere I look is just an unrelenting stream of bullshit about Obama. Then, in a moment of clarity, I remembered at this point in 2008, we were still dealing with the PUMA crowd and the incessant nonsense of Lanny Davis, Terry McAuliffe, and the rest of the idiots with the Clinton campaign, all ginned up by a press corps who was more concerned with ratings, controversy, and pageviews than actual delegate numbers.
And then I calmed down. I still do not feel good about this election, but until the conventions, I am just done with the “some democratic strategists say” pieces in our failed and worthless MSM. The irony of America that our “free” corporate press is the biggest threat to our democracy does not escape me, though.
Mnemosyne
I know commenter Pirate Dan has been working his ass off to help elect Ron Barber to Gabby Giffords’ old seat today. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for good news for him and his colleagues tonight.
Fluke bucket
Good for you Cole! Eye on The Prize!
Valdivia
I hear you John. Today it was all about how Obama has lost all the blacks in NC. Next week it will be women in Michigan. And then Latinos in Nevada. Same story every week until they decide it’s time to hit Romney about something.
Hunter Gathers
‘Tis the season for retarded political analysis.
beltane
The worst part of it all is that much of the stupid punditry from 2008 has been recycled for 2012.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Afuckingmen
smintheus
Like McCain but almost more so, Romney and the people he surrounds himself with are loathsome, humorless, and mean spirited. That came out again and again during the long summer and fall of 2008 and it boosted Obama bit by bit. The same thing is almost bound to happen this year. Character is destiny.
Throwin Stones
Eye on the prize.
I’m workin’ for S. Brown soon.
Ed in NJ
Just remember that every day the pundits declare this to be the worst day/month/week of Obama’s presidency, his poll numbers go up.
He’s got this.
middlewest
I feel far more serene than 2008, when I was actually worried that Obama might have some awful Edwards-style secret looming in his past. Now we know they got nuthin’.
srv
We should have a retrospective Best of PUMA/MUP series, like the NYT’s did with the Civil War.
beltane
@smintheus: At least McCain had grouchiness and the POW thing in his favor. Mitt Romney barely registers as human at all, more like a poorly designed holodeck character.
freelancer
I still feel like I might have to pare down my RSS feed for a while. Too much dumb politics.
Sentient Puddle
I’m feeling pretty serene about the election right now because somewhere between 2008 and now, I learned to filter out all the bullshit political stories that nobody would care about two weeks after they occurred. Which, at the moment, is about 99% of all political stories.
amk
Finally.
Poopyman
@beltane: That wasn’t grouchiness, that was Class One, Grade A assholishness shining through. The press is doing their best not to let on about Mitt this time around.
handy
Ah yes, the 2008 primaries, where it seemed like practically everyone lost their nut fighting over two middle of the road Corporatist politicians. I remember this well.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@freelancer:
I’m putting myself on internet blackout for the weekends, or going to try to.
FlipYrWhig
Slightly OT but… Who the fuck ever decided that John King should be in the “journalism” business? That guy is like the Mitt Romney of cable news, a not very lifelike simulation designed to fool old people who trust whatever they see on television.
amk
@handy: Pity none of your lefty wet dreams got to run then or even now.
Poopyman
Also too, wedged in between the end of the post and the start of the comments is the ad for Fisher Investments: “What Could Happen to the Stock Market if Obama Is Re-Elected?”
Fear sells, people!
srv
John, you do know tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of Russert’s passing?
Shouldn’t we have an all day memorial?
Cacti
@smintheus:
It seems like at least once a week, Mittbot accidentally lets slip the absolute sneering contempt he has for anyone who works for a living.
piratedan
@Mnemosyne: we be hopeful….. supposedly about 2020 local time, some results may get posted then. The PPP pollings were encouraging but folks were working right up to the part where I had to leave town. LOTS of early voting this go around and in this campaign, the Dems hit back with that old tactic of using what the other guy said in public against him. Some appallingly cheesy ads by Kelly using his grandfather in a nod and wink set of ads about how he really wouldn’t gut Medicare despite him being quoted that it needs to be privatized.
Same old GOP scare tactics, a vote for those guys (Dems) is to increase spending, cost jobs, bring nigh the apocalypse etc etc etc
handy
@Poopyman:
It was pretty obvious the press were jilted lovers after gramps McCain got so crotchety he stopped handing them out donuts from back of The Straight Talk Express®
MikeJ
@srv: Roy Clark said it best.
Gus
Watching Daily Show. John Oliver is making John Fund look like an idiot. Or should I say he’s allowing Fund to make himself look like an idiot.
BigSouthern
It’s weird, in 2008 I felt no fear…so much so I voted third party because I knew Obama was a lock.
I’m a bit more concerned this year, so much so I’m definitely voting for him in November and encouraging everyone I know to get off their ass and do the same. While I think Obama has a fair record to run on, the media has not been truthful in painting the picture of the opposition in Congress, which goes a long way in explaining why the last four years weren’t as good as they could have been. I’m also no political scientist, but I do wonder if all the ALEC/Kock Bros. funded activities in the states hasn’t activated the conservative parts of people who see all the fuss and blame it on hippies/unions/gays, and will transfer that to the presidential election.
Or maybe I just need to stay out of the comments section at my local paper.
smintheus
@Poopyman: Yes, McCain and Romney are both extremely snide and sarcastic, behavior that Obama rarely indulges in public. (ETA: as Cacti just said @ 23)
Another thing that McCain and Romney have in common is that they’re both outlandish liars. That may not have been as obvious to the public in 2008 as it should have become, but McCain was perfectly happy talking out of both sides of his mouth simultaneously and lying out of both sides.
SiubhanDuinne
I do know that for most of the past 24 hours, WaPo has been flogging a Dickwhisperer column using the sad Commerce Secretary situation as a metaphor for the Obama Administration/campaign.
They make me ill.
muddy
They announced on the local evening news in VT the other night about someone I never heard of running for US rep. His big first commercial was about small government. I bet everyone’s really into that with plenty of mess left from last year’s hurricane Irene still.
Chris
Is it elitist to say that the biggest threat to our democracy is coming from the public?
I mean, we’ve had periods when we did a pretty good job of pushing the rich back and holding them at bay (and there are other countries that did an even better job). At the end of the day, the reason the country’s in the clusterfuck it’s currently in is that a large chunk of the public decided in the late sixties that their personal prejudices mattered more than their economic interests, and in so doing, they handed the keys to power back to the rich assholes. Media manipulation is just one of the many things that resulted in the fallout.
amk
@piratedan:
In AZ district 08, With ~ 9.38% in, Ron Barber (D) leads Jesse Kelly (R) 52 – 44.
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/AZ/37946/85742/en/summary.html
FuriousPhil
I’m disgusted on a regular basis by television news. I quit watching it years ago. I’m a happier person, despite the screen name. Now, I just get to rage on the internet about things. Progress!
Seriously though, it’s been a problem for years that liberals/progressives just can’t get the message out as well as the corporate funded shills, and I wish I had a solution.
Keith G
This is certainly a problem. It is nonetheless a constant and predictable reality.
As such, it seems to me that a Democratic campaign could develop a proactive strategy to play off this idiocy. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.
samuel
Speaking of unrelenting streams of bullshit about Obama, what does Greenwald have to say these days?
piratedan
@amk: aye that would be the counting of the early ballots that PPP alluded to….. now if those numbers do indeed establish the trend…
smintheus
@Cacti: Yes he does. And even aside from his target, the fact that he goes around sneering is toxic to a presidential campaign. I remember saying the day McCain did the big reveal with Sarah Palin that her first speech offered little more than sneering and sarcasm, which wouldn’t wear well even in a short campaign. I still think that, as much as her blundering ignorance, is what dragged her down and made her political poison.
amk
@piratedan: fingers crossed.
Evolving Deep Southerner
There’s been a bunch more PUMA-era trolls drifting back in drips and drabs. Beating a dead Magical Unity Pony.
eric
i mentioned this the other day: you want the race tighter now so that the press cannot do the romney closing in and obama fading stories that you know would come if the race narrows in sept and oct. i have no worries that obama has a solid electoral lead
Yutsano
@piratedan: Lead is holding so far.
karen marie
I wandered into a Circle K to buy some smokes (yes, I’ve ended up in Arizona — don’t ask) and I learned from the headlines on the newspapers that “Americans have lost 39% of their worth in the last three years.”
Hopeful? You remain hopeful? The only thing I remain hopeful about is my promised early death from smoking cigarettes.I
piratedan
@Yutsano: yeah, about 20% of the precincts reporting, numbers holding steady. Kelly has a perceived advantage in the “boonies” and the more affluent suburban regions, unsure just who has reported as of yet.
amk
With 21.88 % in, Barber leading 52.79 to 44.41
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/AZ/37946/85766/en/summary.html
Cacti
@eric:
For Dubya to win in 2004, he needed 48% of the women’s vote, and 40% of the hispanic vote. Haven’t seen any polling data on women in a while, but he still hovers around 26% of the hispanic vote…about 5 points worse than McCain in 2008.
Tripod
NBC called it – Barber kicked some ass. I’m sure it’ll be great news for Mitt.
amk
@piratedan: Here is the AZ 8 map
http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/House/2012/Primary/AZ
May be you can walk us through ?
Yutsano
@piratedan: Usual pattern is outlying areas report first (because of fewer votes) and more densely populated areas come later. He’s got the Tucson vote yet I’d bet.
amk
@amk: Forget it. It doesn’t show AZ8 precincts.
amk
@Tripod: NBC did ? Already ?
Rafer Janders
@karen marie:
Not “the last three years”. It’s the three years from 2007-2010. That’s a big difference. It’s the three years from the start of the financial crisis, not the three years of Obama’s presidency. Of course, I can see why some “news” sources try to spin it the other way….
amk
@piratedan: Ok, here is the AZ sos (yes, that asshole) site with counties.
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/AZ/37946/85766/en/pr.html
How do you read it ?
mclaren
Look at it this way, John: if the American people are so fucked up that they willingly vote for a near-billionaire who promises to kill Obamacare and shut down health care for everyone with pre-existing conditions and who has said he will work hard to end medicare and social security as we know it…
…Well, in that case, the American people are so far gone there’s nothing anyone can do to rescue this shithole of a country. But personally I don’t believe that the American people are that demented, deluded, degraded, and deranged.
So I’m going to go out on a limb here and jump to the wild conclusion that Obama pulls it out this November and The Smiler gets to go back to La Jolla to torture small animals in the basement of his twelve-million-dollar seaside home.
Yutsano
50% reporting and the percentage hasn’t changed. That could be ballgame for Kelly.
amk
With 50% in, Barber still leading by 52-44.
piratedan
@amk: it means very good news most likely…. because the rural areas, Pinal and Cochise County tend to run Red. (Pinal Co. has the bald Sheriff Paul Babeu who was in the Build the damn fence Ad with McCain and then found to be holding his illegal immigrant gay lover against his will with threats of deportation… tune in to next week in Az Law Enforement Chronicles). Pima County tends to trend blue (not exclusively) although there is a loud virulent Red stain in the NW Foothills that is fairly affluent. So if Barber is ahead by tens of thousands of votes and all of the rural ballots have been cast, it looks very promising. Santa Cruz Co. is blue, heavily hispanic and it was quietly a focus in the campaign to get out and reach out to that ethnic demographic (also the native american population too, been lots of quiet work ongoing to get people registered.
karen marie
@srv: I’ll bring the rotten tomatoes.
amk
@piratedan: Yay. Go Barber.
.
ETA: Great groundwork. Thanks
Cacti
@piratedan:
The common thread between Babeu and Arpaio…both are transplanted easterners from Massachusetts, who came here to live out their Wyatt Earp fantasies.
Massholes go home, I says.
karen marie
@Rafer Janders: It was USA Today had that headline. The other papers were cagier but left the same false impression.
karen marie
@Cacti: Hey! I came here to change that dynamic.
David Koch
@FlipYrWhig: Oh, so you’re the guy who watches his show.
seriously, he has lowest rated show on cable news.
amk
@piratedan: Ok, now with 66% in, Barber is still leading by 52-44. Methinks this is over, no ?
piratedan
66% in, Barber maintaining a 14k vote lead (or 8%) looks very good for Ron. Barber may not be a progressive but I think he’ll be very similar to Giffords, staying with the Dems on all of the hard votes (like ACA) while occasionally straying on something that may have a local twist.
piratedan
@amk: pretty sure that it is, perhaps too paranoid after so many close calls in the past, but this looks good.
and while I’m typing this, the AP has called it for Barber!
amk
@piratedan: Excellent. We will take blue dogs/yellow dogs/pink dogs at this point.
Tripod
@amk:
AP called it.
Kinky Beats
@mclaren:
I think a little bit of HL Mencken is necessary for right now when thinking about the stupidity of the American people and the possibility of them electing Romney…..”Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Xenos
TPM called it for Barber. Yoohoo!
As someone from the greater Springfield region who has spent a lot of time in the Berkshires, I would like to apologize to the people of Arizona for Arpaio and Babeu. I am really glad that they went west, though, because western NE has enough troubles without the likes of them holding positions of public trust.
coin operated
@beltane: My Republican friends would vote for the EMH before they would vote for Obama. Just sayin…
Mnemosyne
@piratedan:
Yay! Congratulations and I’m glad all of your (collective) hard work for Barber paid off.
David Koch
AZ-8 special election is a devastating defeat for the republicans and portends poorly for Romney in November.
this double digit loss in a conservative red state spells the end/defeat/refudiation of teabaggerism.
Republican activists won’t soon forget how Romney wouldn’t even fly out and campaign or donate money.
piratedan
@Mnemosyne: team effort, was just a guy on the phones… I think this one was personal for the DNC. I know that Giffords and Wasserman-Schultz are close, Barber was one of those shot on that fateful day and you got the feeling that this one really mattered. A fair amount of folks were pissed off by the way that the R’s completely pissed away this opportunity to show a less partisan side to their politics, never happened. People remembered.
David Koch
@piratedan: Wow. You guys won by double digits in a swing district. You just went out and won, instead of sitting on a blog all day, eating cheetos, and belly aching about DWS and blackity-black-guy.
Tripod
@David Koch:
Yeah… but Barber’s not a Progressive. Just another Obambi enabling Blue Dog. A real Progressive would have fucked away the opportunity and the Netroots would be having a collective breakdown trying to explain why.
Yutsano
@piratedan: You still deserve a celebration. All of you. Because the hard part will be keeping those voters in November. After that, we party even harder. Or I emigrate.
cckids
@piratedan:
Smoke 2 at a time, you’ll shorten your sentence. Lighten up!
David Koch
If Romney had only flown out to AZ-8 and fired up the base with the bully pulpit they would have rolled back the 10 point rout.
piratedan
@David Koch: well the dynamic here most likely doesn’t apply elsewhere nor would I recommend having your local legislator gunned down while meeting with constituents. The thing is, Kelly is a douchebag and while that doesn’t necessarily exempt you from obtaining office he was such a classless dick while campaigning. In addition the local Republicans and state level Republicans all tried to pretend that the events of that day in January didn’t matter much less admit that they happened or feel that they needed to apologize in any capacity for what they had said, done or implied. Gun clip restrictions you say, limit the number of bullets from 31 to 13? Why hell then that would imply that there’s a problem and to illustrate just how fucking tone deaf that we are, we’ll introduce a bill to name a state hand gun while we’re also kicking poor people who need transplants off the rolls for health care. After a while, enough of that shit gets done where people start to see you for what you are. The tide may slowly be changing here, Pearce recalled, Barber elected, better ground game showing up in places… I remain hopeful, with the tacit understanding that its all dependent on their ability to sell the next big lie or if the Feds finally indict Arapaio and that house of cards that ties the illegal immigrant shakedown to the private prison industry and legislation for dollars all comes to fruition.
karen marie
@cckids: Easy for you to say. Move to Arizona and try saying that.
sharl
Ya done good, piratedan. Congratulation to you and other sensible folk in AZ-8. Struggle never ends, of course, but you should take a few minutes to do the Happy Dance.
kay
I always think it would be a good idea to reveal which “Democratic strategists” are also lobbyists.
I’d like a crawl on the screen listing clients beneath their name, but that’s probably too much to ask.
Not the legal definition of “lobbyist” either. Just a straight reveal of who is speaking as an advocate for an industry, sector or cause and who is not.
People would really hear this stuff differently if
we knew who is working for whom.
Who-all pays Ed Rendell, right now? I don’t know the answer but it matters, does it not?
Elizabelle
Cue the WaPost website this morning: most prominent headline:
Obama team’s woes concern some Democrats, by Karen Tumulty (Villager: Time magazine, Kaplan)
Those some Democrats sure get around.
kindness
My sister and her husband were out west last week. It was great seeing them as they don’t leave Manhattan much. I was shocked to find out her husband is a Hillary guy. I guess I should be happy as I figured he was an NE Republican. Still, he went out of his way to bag on Obama and say how different it all would have been if only it had been Hillary.
Myself & my spouse were very polite and did not agree with him but didn’t call him out either. It’s curious how well educated people can be so stupid. Had Hillary won, she’d be getting the same treatment right now except we’d also have the Bubba circus going on as well. That he doesn’t see that, I can’t figure. Naa…he’s a Bloomberg Republican, which isn’t a bad kind but quite disingenuous still.
The Ancient Randonneur
Why not let Spike Lee get in on the action? Thanks, Politico! When I woke up this morning the first thought that came into my head was, what does Spike Lee think about Obama’s chances in 2012?
Elizabelle
The WaPost story is boilerplate. Nine unnamed “Democratic strategists”, one miffed that Obama won’t take any outside advice. (That you, Mark Penn?)
blah blah blah Cory Boo*ker blah blah blah Ed Rendell
Nugget that seems news to me:
I think Greenberg and Carville got it right.
Totebaggers might see the fragile recovery.
It’s very scary out there for too many of us, and what Obama could and will do to protect the middle class should be a game winner for him.
No more talking up an economy that could taken down by Europe or more GOP and Wall Street stupidity this year.
Further, Rove’s Crossroads ads are hitting Obama on the economy every few minutes in the DC market.
Play to Obama’s genuine concern for the middle class, which Romney does not share and cannot convincingly lie about.
The GOP have sabotaged any progress they can and care most about wealthy elites; beyond the 27%, a lot of Americans understand that.
OzoneR
@kindness:
That’s true, but the level of irrationality from white working class votes would be smaller.
kay
@Elizabelle:
There’s two problems with it, though.
It focuses exclusively on the “referendum on Obama” theme, which is too big a concession to Romney to just hand him, and no one knows anything about Mitt Romney. Since we’re obviously not going to find anything out through “news”, Obama has to pay for ads that describe Mitt Romney’s past and plans.
SEIU are running ads that tie Romney to the Ryan plan in Ohio. The ad is effective. It’s just plain language recitation of what the Romney-Ryan plan would do to middle class people. Incredibly (!) they actually mention that millions of middle class people rely on Medicaid for nursing home care. I do believe it is the first time I have heard that obvious truth on television, that Medicaid is not so much for “the poor” (as the NYTimes likes to piously intone) as it is for the “old” and for the “disabled”. But PEOPLE know that, because they know damn well who’s paying for the nursing home, and it’s not them. That isn’t a “positive vision of the new normal” but it will work here and it’s true.
So. Who is going to tell us about Romney? Not media, has to be Obama, because SEIU doesn’t have unlimited funds.
kay
@Elizabelle:
I’m also really wary, and I think it’s justified. Romney’s record at Bain is absolutely fair game, and highlighting it is politically smart, yet so many “Democratic strategists” went into a lobbying frenzy against Obama going there that they essentially ruined the whole message.
They were just wrong. They were dead wrong on the very first theme of the campaign, and that was, what? Three weeks ago? Why are they right now?
OzoneR
@kay:
Funny, I was always told if Obama led, the party would follow. You know, bully pulpit and all
Stuck in the Funhouse
@kay:
Obama has wisely rejected most of the DLC winger light critique, even from Bill Clinton. And is doing it his way, which all things considered, his polling is just a few points off the 2008 final election result. The busy bodying Clinton grade DC consultant class cannot be trusted, and have been pissed at Obama for turning off the DNC and campaign cash money spigot they were addicted to up till Howard Dean began weening them off in 2005.
Running as an incumbent means multi tasking several lines of tactical campaigning, where a challenger, or non incumbent race can be truncated into a single meme of ‘I can do better’.
I think the coming econ speech by Obama, is something he has to do. He has to educate the voters that what we are facing, and he is facing, are some structural problems long in the making with the economy, and will take more time to fix, than normal. And Carville’s focus group study says pretty much the same thing, but with the recommendation of ditching defense of current policy and making the case for all new ones, like a challenger. Further, That this is going to take a while, and we are basically on the right track, minus any cooperation from the wingnuts that are slowing things down.
Romney will have one tactic for a challenger, that Obama has failed and he can do better. It is nonsense to recommend Obama ignore this, failing to defend his record, as best as can, and start over with nothing but new policies. First, it is a tacit admission that his policies, first term, have failed. And it is leaving unchallenged, allegations from the other side. That is a real loser that dems are famous for over the decades.
He has to also define Romney before Romney can define himself. That is politics 101. And finally, do have a plan going forward, mixed with what can be plausibly defended from the past, and reminding voters we live in a democracy, and he isn’t a dictator. The other side has some responsibility to govern as well, and to a large degree, let him govern, which they have not been doing.
This is the truth, but I expect Obama will also mention some new ideas, or new ways to implement his ideas. Which is mostly a keynesian approach, to include long term deficit reduction, along with more stimulus. The Dem Corp focus groups indicated that they get, to a degree, the severity and depth of the econ problems we face, that are out of the ordinary.
My Obot two cents, FWIW.
handsmile